LEXINGTON, Ky. — As we sit here just 25 hours short of the magical month of March, we are reminded of the coaching cliche that declares freshmen who’ve played this far, this much into their initial college basketball season are no longer truly freshmen. This comes to mind because Kentucky's Harrison twins appear to be determined to wipe that one off the ledger.

They are freshmen, all right. Together they have played 1,795 minutes wearing Kentucky blue, including a combined 77 in Thursday night’s 71-67 overtime loss to Arkansas, but there was rarely a hint in their time on the court they’d learned a whole lot from the 27 college games they’d played previously.

Julius Randle (AP Photo)

It did not go unnoticed, not by those who watched them shoot a combined 7-of-27 from the field, commit seven turnovers and pass for a mere three assists during all that time against the Razorbacks, and not by the gentleman in charge of coaching them to play like sophomores.

There were multiple indictments from coach John Calipari, some looping in the equally dismal play of freshman wing James Young, some leaving us to draw the conclusion about which particular players he meant:

— “Our guards didn’t play well. I mean, you could say shooting; I could tell you dribbling. We had three guys that had 11 turnovers between them. So our guard play was horrendous today.”

— “None of the three want to take the responsibility. That’s what young guys do.”

— “You know what? At halftime, I needed to take a couple guys out. A couple guys shouldn’t have been in the game. They should have been backups, and we should have played other people. I knew that. You’re trying to nudge them to get them to go.”

— “The thing that disappointed me today is even with the lead, we had two guys that gave up on the game. You know it, because you watched it and you saw. They gave up on the game.”

So this is not going as was planned at the start of the year, when Kentucky (21-7, 11-4 SEC) widely was ranked No. 1 on the strength of its recruiting class, a group that has turned out to be substantially misevaluated.

Power forward Julius Randle is an exceptional talent, but he’s not as comfortable on the perimeter against a genuine defense as might have been gleaned from his solid ballhandling ability and worthwhile shooting touch. In 2007-08, his one year at Kansas State, Michael Beasley connected on 36 3-pointers. Randle has made three.

Young actually is more productive than anticipated, averaging 14.6 points in nearly 33 minutes per game. But he continues to shoot painfully poor percentages because his instincts to force difficult attempts overwhelm his early efforts to play the game properly, as when he abandoned a guarded shot less than two minutes into the game to feed center Willie Cauley-Stein as he cut down the right side for what became a dunk. It was a great moment, but too rare. Young wound up shooting 4-of-12, got a single rebound and turned over the ball four times against the Razorbacks (19-9, 8-7).

And then you have the Harrisons. Andrew was supposed to be the prize of the two, a 6-5 point guard whose consensus recruiting ranking in the Recruiting Services Consensus Index (RSCI) placed him ahead of Duke’s Jabari Parker. How this came to be is mystifying, because Parker arrived at Duke with a complete package of offensive skills — handle, pass, post and shoot, both off the catch and off the bounce — and Andrew is a point guard who is not an accomplished passer. On a team with three other double-figure scorers, he averages but 3.5 assists. Aaron Harrison, a shooting guard, was ranked directly behind Parker. Aaron is shooting only 30.8 percent from 3-point range.

Make no mistake, the Harrisons are terrific talents. But the overstatements that appear to have developed primarily from their inordinate size — Andrew is 6-5, Aaron is 6-6 — were a significant factor in so much being expected from this Kentucky team. In that sense, what has developed in the four months since the season began has not been all that wanting.

And yet what they showed, and Young alongside them, against the Razorbacks was not nearly enough and not nearly all they had.

Down the stretch of regulation, with 33 seconds left and Kentucky ahead by a basket, Andrew penetrated deep against the Arkansas defense and positioned himself for an easy floater. The baseline defenders held back, did not react to his entry, but he tried anyway to force a lob pass over them that Randle could not handle. Arkansas tied it with a couple free throws and forced overtime, wherein Andrew and Young each committed a turnover and, with UK down four, Aaron forced a wild long-range jumper that had little chance of connecting. It did not.

The Wildcats had held a 4-point lead with 1:13 remaining in regulation and could not close. For all the free throws they missed in this game, and there were nine in the second half, none occurred as that lead was surrendered.

“There’s a lot of things we didn’t do today that we usually have been doing,” Randle said. “I never see a loss coming. I never go into a game thinking we’re going to lose. I never go into a game thinking we’re not going to put the effort out … we just didn’t tonight.